January 18, 2005

Phonak, AG2R to round out Tour?

CyclingNews.com quotes this story (in French) from VeloMania.net suggesting Tour boss Jean-Marie LeBlanc is leaning toward 21 teams in the 2005 Tour, and that AG2R and Phonak will get the provisional slots when they're announced sometime before January 31.

If that comes to pass, it will be interesting to see how Phonak's season shakes out: You can't just dump Santiago Perez and Tyler Hamilton with no ill effects. It would also appear that Floyd Landis would be well-placed to take the team lead in the Tour. On a related note, PezCycling has a report from Phonak's training camp in Mallorca.